The roads of the town of cannibals were nothing but dirt. There were no tarred roads or interlocking tiles. No bricks or cobblestones. Just dirt. Years of having people and jepats and passing caravans move across them had packed the grounds so tight that it had hardened. It took a lot to raise any dust from them.

  The town itself reminded Aiden of towns from those old western movies his mother had loved and his father had simply tolerated due to his love for her. The buildings were tall but mostly fashioned from planks. There were a few buildings of stone and bricks here and there, but they seemed more like attempts at developing the town.

  As Aiden and his companions rode in, jepats slow, the lights from different buildings slowly came into view. Elaswit looked around with the enamored eyes of an uneducated tourist. Aiden couldn’t blame her for it. Towns like this were a rarity in the kingdom of Bandiv. Out in the wild were nomads and tribal style of living reigned supreme, there was a town like this every few mountains.

  “Not an orb in sight,” Valdan muttered, looking about.

  The night sky above was littered with countless stars, but they were not enough to grant proper illumination. The moon was in its crescent form, ever so stingy with the light it had gathered from the sun.

  So while they saw the ground beneath them and figments of their imagination lurking in the darkness. What banished the darkness and granted them sight hung from lanterns placed outside houses and homes. Foreign to a kingdom of magic like Bandiv, each lamp held a tongue of fire within them.

  It was the streets’ source of light.

  “Do they live like this?” Elaswit sounded impressed and saddened at the same time, as if she was watching the helpless somehow survive against all odds.

  The town did not survive like this. Aiden knew that there were buildings that used enchanted orbs as their light sources just like all other normal towns and cities in the kingdom. But he didn’t see the need to break it to the princess. No matter how briefly they ended up staying, they would eventually come to see it.

  The houses at the beginning of the town were mostly taverns and bars. With three major inns you would think the town had a personal grudge against having visitors. As for their source of revenue, they made it from farming and animal husbandry. There was a large body of water somewhere to the east of the town. A lake if Aiden was being generous. Or perhaps some kind of stream flowing from some major river somewhere.

  Aiden had never bothered to find the specifics. All he knew was that their source of fish, enough to feed the entire town apparently came from there.

  The forest was where they got their meat. It was also where they hid the bodies. A frown ruined Aiden’s lips as memories from a life lived yet unlived slithered into his mind.

  You’re not here to find proof or bring justice, he reminded himself. You’re here for Ted. Revenge is just a little extra if you have the time.

  “You look displeased,” Elaswit said as they passed a tall building.

  It looked like a small monolith, square and ugly. The builders had given it no personal attention. It had no creativity and seemed like a rushed job. It stood as tall as three buildings placed upon each other and had signs of aging all over it. It was easily the oldest looking building in the town. Anyone who knew anything about the place knew that it was the newest building in the town.

  It was also abandoned.

  “Am I the only one worried about how easily we entered?” Elaswit asked as Aiden raised a hand to halt their motion.

  All three jepats pulled to a stop in front of the ugly building.

  “The town boasts no soldiers or guards,” Valdan pointed out. He looked behind them, to the small signboard they’d walked under as they’d come in. “No gates or walls either.”

  The town did not have them because it could not afford them. It boasted itself as a self sufficient town. Most people in the kingdom were unaware of it. Those that were aware of them treated them as one would treat the outskirts of anywhere. To those who knew them, they were simply the outskirts of Elstrire.

  Elstrire treated them like phantom limbs. They were more than happy to ignore them since they weren’t causing any real trouble.

  Aiden was studying the structure of the ugly monolith when Elaswit asked him a question.

  “Why did we stop here?”

  “Because this is where we will be spending the night,” he answered.

  Elaswit studied the building just as Aiden was. There was a single door in front, flanked by two windows on each side. The windows were covered in dust ages old and the door looked like it was left ajar. There was a small lantern hanging from a stick that looked stabbed into the brown wall, but it didn’t look capable of holding any type of light.

  A shudder ran through Elaswit’s shoulders. “Can’t we just find an inn and check in?”

  “You can. I would rather not.” Aiden threw one leg over his jepat and dismounted. He hit the ground with a silent thud. “In fact, I would not advise it.”

  Valdan gave him a questioning look. After a while, he dismounted as well. He looked back at the path they’d come from then to the path ahead of them. Then he looked at the town around.

  “What about this place has you on edge, Lord Lacheart?”

  Aiden unbuckled his two swords from his steed and threw them over his shoulder. “The fact that you now call me Lord Lacheart instead of Aiden is one.”

  Valdan’s face hardened and he looked away. But Aiden had caught a few emotions there. There was shame, a touch of sadness. Anger. Oddly, the anger was not directed at him. It was internalized. The knight was angry with himself.

  With his free hand, Aiden reached for the axe and pulled it free. “I am ninety percent sure that this has a lot to do with Derendoff, but this is neither the time nor the place to deal with it.”

  “Sounds like the perfect time and place,” Elaswit interrupted, her tone sarcastic. She dismounted from her jepat finally. With no personal item attached to her jepat, there was nothing to take. She gestured at the building, the action somehow carrying greater sarcasm than the tone of her voice. “We have found ourselves very comfortable lodging, and I’m sure the beddings will be of the greatest quality.”

  Her passive aggressive tantrum was funny to experience.

  “Are you laughing?” She rounded on him, her expression fierce. “This is not funny in the slightest.”

  “It’s a little funny,” Valdan said from where he was, his sword held in one hand.

  Aiden ignored the weapon pointedly. It was the weapon Valdan had fought Torat with. While the knight had agreed to change his clothes and discard them, he had refused to surrender the sword.

  Taking pity on her, Aiden gestured vaguely to the north with the axe in his hand. Thinking better of it, he made a broad sweeping motion with the weapon, encompassing the entire town. “I’m sure there’s an inn around here somewhere. If you go around some more, I’m sure something will turn up.”

  Elaswit drew a blank. “Alone?”

  Standing closer to the building than Aiden remembered, Valdan waited expectantly for his answer.

  “I’m sleeping here tonight.” Aiden pointed the axe at the building. “It feels… within my power.”

  Elaswit pouted. She looked as if she couldn’t help it. “I know you don’t like people, but it can’t be that bad.”

  Valdan made a sound that could’ve been a laugh.

  “Trust me,” he said. “It is.”

  Then he turned and walked into the building. Aiden noted how he did not hesitate, pushing the door open and allowing the darkness inside swallow him like a gaping maw.

  “But why?” Elaswit asked.

  Arms full, Aiden shrugged. “I just told you.”

  “No.” Elaswit shook her head emphatically. “I mean why here? You practically walked us here as if you knew of its existence.”

  Aiden had known of its existence. It had been one of the places he’d hidden away from the enemies in his past life. Why here? Because it felt safe. Because it was safe.

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  “When you’ve seen the things I’ve seen and know the things I know, you tend to keep an eye out for everything.” He started walking to the building. “You start to question everything and seek out what is safe. I saw the building the moment we went under the sign board.”

  He was at the door when Elaswit started following. “Aren’t we going to put the jepats somewhere safe?”

  Aiden raised both hands to show her that he was occupied.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked. There was no way she did not know what it meant.

  “Would you,” Aiden gave her a flourish of a bow, as best he could with two full hands, “please be kind enough as to do it.”

  Elaswit’s jaw dropped. She looked from him to the jepat as if he wasn’t making any sense. She did it twice, then thrice.

  “This is unfair,” she huffed.

  She turned back and stomped her way over to the jepat.

  She needs to learn to stop saving her weapons inside her storage space, Aiden thought as he turned and headed into the building. It delayed the speed of readying your weapon when you kept it in your storage space.

  It could get her killed.

  Handling the jepats would likely take the princess a few minutes. Knowing that, Aiden figured it was time to have that long awaited conversation with Valdan.

  …

  Inside the building was as abandoned as it looked from the outside. The doors opened up to a vast but empty hall. Straight down the path was a dusty bench. Anyone who knew anything about business buildings would assume it was designed to be something of a receptionist’s desk. There was a waiting area to the side. At least that was what the array of seats placed strategically on that end looked like.

  The ceiling was not so high and two staircases, each on both sides of the desk, led up. Aiden could see enough to not bump into things but couldn’t see enough to track anything.

  He placed his axe down momentarily and unbuckled one of the pockets of his soldier’s belt. A small cube fell into his hand and he channeled mana into it.

  Tossing the cube forward, he waited for it to activate.

  [You have used Enchantment of Lesser Sensitivity]

  [Effect: 50% increase in signs of life.]

  [Duration: 00:02:10.]

  Aiden’s eyes settled on Valdan’s footprints. The knight had taken the stairs to the left. Aiden picked up his axe and went up the stairs to the left.

  Rising to the second floor, Aiden called out to the knight.

  “Valdan Dirtwater.”

  He did nothing to calm his voice but kept caution on how high he’d raised it. This floor was just as dirty as the one below. Covered in as much dust as it was, it had most likely not seen any human life in almost forever.

  Aiden found himself walking down a long hallway. His sheathed swords tapped against his back with each step he took, and he kept his attention on everything around him. Steps slow, he took in the familiar sight.

  From the little he could remember, nothing had changed about the place.

  “Valdan,” he tried again, voice neutral not raised to a holla or lowered to a whisper. “You have questions and I have answers for now.”

  The sound of rusted hinges groaning in the quiet night pulled his attention to the left. Two doors ahead he found Valdan standing in front of an open door.

  “I have a lot of questions,” Valdan said, tone casual. “Can you answer all?”

  Aiden made his way to Valdan but did not stop at the knight. “Elaswit is taking care of the jepats,” he said as he passed the knight. “I can answer the questions I have answers to until she finds us, so you’ll have to be fast.”

  His destination was two rooms ahead and he made a straight path to it. It was one of the few doors in the building that had a handle instead of a knob. Standing in front of it, he raised his leg high and bent the handle with his booted foot. He pushed it open and turned to Valdan.

  “You coming?”

  The knight looked inside his chosen room, hesitated for a moment, then answered. “Yes.”

  Aiden placed the axe against the nearest wall. It was his least important weapon. At some point he was going to get the skill that came with wielding the axe. But he was in no hurry. Even in his past life, the axe was not a favored weapon for him. It had an aggressive style of fighting and he was more finesse than aggression.

  Walking through the room, he made sure he didn’t drag his legs. The last thing he wanted was to raise dust as he moved. His two sheathed swords, still held together by a single belt strap, he discarded onto a desk.

  He stopped there, paused before he could walk away from the desk. A soft sad smile touched his lips as more memories came to him. He walked around the desk, fingers trailing chaotic lines in the dust that had settled on it.

  When he stood behind it, he watched the door from there. He had hidden here for hours on end when the cannibals had come for him. They’d ransacked the entire place but hadn’t come here.

  He looked at the window to his side. When he’d gotten tired of hiding, he’d gone out through the window.

  He was still smiling. He couldn’t help it. This room had an eerie place in his heart. After a moment, he turned his attention from the window and tapped the desk with his finger. The action dispelled his sense of nostalgia.

  To think I had survived against all odds.

  He’d returned to the present just in time to find Valdan walking into the room.

  “What happened on your home world to make you this way?” Those were the first questions that came from Valdan’s lips. “What happened that has made you so quick to take lives. You do not hesitate. You see the chance, plan it out, and execute it.”

  Aiden raised a brow. “You do the same.”

  “I am older and I am burdened with an occupation that demands it of me.” Valdan folded his arms over his chest. His sword was strapped to his hip. “What’s your excuse?”

  Aiden imitated his stance. “I was kidnapped from my world with no will of my own and told I would have to learn to kill and destroy if I wanted to survive and have a chance at going home.”

  Valdan frowned. It deepened into a scowl. Then it fell off his face. “Touche.”

  Aiden blinked in surprise. He had anticipated a slew of responses, but that had not been one of them.

  “What?” Valdan stepped into the room completely and rested against the wall next to Aiden’s axe. “Did I use it wrong?”

  Aiden chuckled. “Not at all. I just didn’t expect all your… sulking… to disappear so quickly.”

  “I wasn’t sulking.”

  It was impressive had stoic and expressionless Valdan sounded saying those words when he had, in fact, been sulking.

  “What’s your next question?” Aiden asked.

  Valdan raised his hand and gestured, somehow encompassing the entire building with a twirl of a single finger. “What is this place?”

  “An abandoned adventure society hall.” Aiden knew exactly what Valdan was trying to do. The knight was far more attentive than the princess.

  Valdan nodded sagely. “And how do you know this?” he asked as if he’d caught Aiden in a trap.

  “Why do you think the queen would come and visit me just before our departure this morning?” he asked with a touch of faux annoyance. “To play pin the tail on the jepat?”

  “I’ll take that as a reference from your home,” Valdan said, crossing his legs. “Then what did she come to talk to you about?”

  “Elaswit following us. You not dying. The Order. Teaching me a powerful enchantment when I come back. And asking me to forgive her husband because what he did to you was mostly her idea and that of his advisor. Apparently, he was against the idea.”

  The tension returned to the room with Aiden’s words.

  An uncomfortable silence settled between them.

  Valdan broke it. “He had intentions for me. Intentions that came true.” He looked to the side, refusing to meet Aiden’s gaze. “It was harsh, but it was understandable.”

  A line creased Aiden’s brows and he sighed. “You knights. Loyal to a fault. Any other questions?”

  “Was finding out about the bounty Derendoff placed on you the reason you killed him?”

  “I killed him because I decided it was time for him to die.”

  “Not because of the bounty?”

  “He’s dead, Valdan.” Aiden walked around the table, back to the other side. He moved to the window and stared at the town beyond. “That is all there is to it. Why no longer matters. He died under the laws of the kingdom. There was no foul play.”

  “The king asked you not to kill him.” There was some kind of accusation in Valdan’s voice.

  But what exactly was he accusing Aiden of? Disobeying a king that was in no position to order him about?

  Aiden sighed. This seemed childish. “You do know that he is your king, not mine. Right?”

  “It changes very little.”

  Aiden cocked a brow in surprise and part amusement. “Would you like me to break it down a little more for you?”

  “Don’t sass me, Aiden,” Valdan said with a frown.

  “No sass. Would you like me to?”

  “Alright. Go for it.”

  Go for it? Aiden wondered if the knight was aware that he was adopting some of his phrases.

  “Alright,” Aiden began, going for it. “To put it into better perspective, here is how it goes. He is your king. He is the ruler of another sovereign power I find myself in. Correct?”

  “Correct,” Valdan confirmed.

  “But here’s the thing,” Aiden said, turning away from the window. “To me, he is my captor. My kidnapper. Some would say my undeserved jailer.”

  Valdan’s lips pressed into a thin line. Aiden saw the knight realize that he could not refute the argument.

  “Listening to him,” Aiden said. “Is something I do out of fear and courtesy. Not respect or subservience. He asked me not to kill a man that I chose to kill for crimes against me. There was no reason for me to listen.”

  “You listened when I asked you not to kill Belle during your duel,” Valdan pointed out. “And you and I both know you really wanted her dead.”

  Aiden shrugged. “That’s the difference between you and your king, Valdan. You have earned privileges with me that he has not. There’s nothing complicated about that.”

  Valdan opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and closed it. Aiden raised a brow at that.

  “Something to say?” he asked, pressing the issue.

  Valdan shook his head. “Not really. I was just wondering about one of the things you said about the queen.”

  “What’s that?”

  Outside the room, Aiden could hear the sound of footsteps.

  “Valdan!” Elaswit called out a little too loudly. “Aiden!”

  Valdan looked at the still open door. The look on his face said he wanted to answer but he did not.

  Someone had to teach Elaswit how not to walk so loudly.

  Valdan returned his attention to Aiden. “You said the queen wished to teach you an enchantment when we return. Do you intend to learn from her?”

  That was a heavy question.

  “I have heard,” Valdan continued, “that she is actually a very powerful [Enchanter].”

  Aiden did not answer immediately. Instead, he asked a question of his own. “I’ve been behaving differently since we left the castle. It is as clear and obvious as the dust in this room. Why aren’t you asking me about that?”

  They heard one of the doors to the other rooms open.

  “Valdan?” Elaswit called out in a lower voice, most likely only addressing the words to the room she had just opened.

  “I’m not asking because I’m sure you will tell me what exactly has changed for you when you’re ready,” Valdan answered Aiden’s question.

  Am I? Aiden wondered. He doubted he would if he was not asked. It was a habit you picked when you lived a dangerous life. You only gave information that was necessary. And if someone was close to you, you only told them things when they asked.

  You did not necessarily keep information from them, you just didn’t address it until it was addressed.

  “Are you going to learn from the queen?” Valdan asked. Another door opened outside the room. This one was closer than the last, and Elaswit called into it once more. She called out to Valdan not Aiden.

  As simple as the question was, Aiden knew it was more than just a question. Valdan was asking him if he planned on returning.

  Aiden left his answer as cryptic as Valdan’s question. “I find that I enjoy learning from you, sir knight.”

  Then Elaswit walked into the room and joined them.

  “Here you are,” she declared with a touch of annoyance. “I’ve been calling you two for a while now.” Her brows furrowed slightly. “Wait. Am I interrupting something?”

  Aiden smiled, walking up to them. “Not at all. But now that you’re here, it’s time for us to get things moving.”

  “Things like what?” She looked between them. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re heading out,” Aiden answered.

  Valdan gave him an odd look. “We are?”

  “We are,” he confirmed. “But first, we need a plan.”