Bear School Astartes

It was a young man with a felt hat on his head, wearing a leather vest—practical and nimble.

Running or riding must have left him gasping for breath, his face flushed red, and his chestnut hair damp with sweat, plastered to his forehead.

The bartender of the Silver Swan Tavern stepped in front of him first.

The other people in the tavern just gave him a cursory glance, then turned back and let their eyes fall to their own tables.

”Look at you, all flustered and frantic.”

The bartender, a white towel slung over his shoulder, sized the young man up and down, then handed him a glass of water.

”Who are you looking for? Is it that urgent?”

What the bartender meant was that he should tone down both his movements and his noise, so as not to bother the other guests.

The high-end ambiance of the Silver Swan Tavern was also a kind of luxury.

But the young man only took the glass, gulped down a mouthful, and then raised one hand again, loudly asking around.

”Excuse me, is Duke Lann of Sintra here? I’ve asked all the way from the city hall to Giancardi Bank, then to the Workshop District, and finally ended up here.”

At the booth tucked into a corner of the ground-floor hall, the four people at the table stared blankly at the courier who’d tracked someone all the way into the tavern.

It was Lann who finally raised his hand in greeting.

”Over here, sir.”

Everyone lifted their heads for a glance, then hurriedly ducked them back down.

Only the young courier let out a relieved breath, returned the glass to the bartender, and walked over.

He stepped up onto the little platform of the booth, first taking off his felt hat, clasping it in both hands before his chest.

You could tell that although he was young, he was already a seasoned courier.

Anyone seeing Lann’s build and looks for the first time couldn’t help spacing out for a moment.

This courier was no exception, but the task in his hands quickly snapped him back to focus.

”Th-this is a message from Vizima, my lord.”

The courier stammered a little as he spoke.

At the same time he pulled a letter from his breast and handed it over to Lann at the table.

The young Demon Hunter reached out and took it; the bright red wax seal on it was intact, the wax bearing the image of... Temeria’s coat of arms, the White Lily.

Veltrest?

”Vizima... huh.” Margaret smiled suggestively and glanced at Lann. ”Is it from Triss? She’s dying to see you, is she?”

”No.” Lann replied with a slight frown, showing her the wax seal on the envelope.

The others at the table all raised their brows as well, unable to figure out what business Veltrest could have with Lann.

”Thanks.” Lann took an Oren Coin from his pocket, set it on the table, and slid it toward the courier. ”You ran all over the city. That’s hard work.”

The letter he slipped into his pocket.

But the courier didn’t leave. Instead, he wet his lips, a little nervous, and spoke to Lann.

”Um... you’d better read it right now, my lord.”

The hand holding his felt hat rubbed at it in his nervousness.

”It’s kind of urgent. And I’ve got a verbal message to go with it. They’re meant to be delivered together.”

That finally made even Lann lift his brows in surprise.

He took the letter back out, broke the wax seal open right away, and pulled out the pages to read.

There were several sheets inside the envelope. Lann skimmed quickly through the first few, and only when he reached the last one did his eyes narrow slightly as he slowed down to read it properly.

When he finished, he folded the letter up as a matter of habit and looked up at the courier standing by the table.

”Leaving aside all the earlier flowery nonsense and those ornate, hollow greetings... is the situation real?”

”It’s real, my lord.” The courier lowered his voice without sounding out of place; from the look of him, he really did carry messages for important people all the time.

”Every word of it is real.”

”And the specifics?” Lann pressed. ”I mean the numbers.”

He lifted the folded pages in his hand toward the courier. ”This only uses fuzzy terms like ’large’ and ’many’. I want actual figures.”

”That’s where the verbal part of the message comes in, my lord.”

The courier’s eyes flicked left and right over the table, asking silently whether Lann wanted to speak in private.

If this were a standard Royal Family secret dispatch, the courier would have the authority to directly dismiss everyone else.

But apparently, when Veltrest sent him out with the letter, he’d been instructed to respect Lann’s decision.

Lann said nothing, just gestured with his hand.

Belengar shifted sideways, leaving an empty spot at the table.

So the courier understood.

He didn’t stand on ceremony, yanked over a stool and sat, continuing in a low voice.

”It’s all gone.”

”What?” Lann’s hand, which had been toying with the letter paper, suddenly froze. He asked again, ”What do you mean?”

”Exactly what it says, my lord.” As he spoke, it was as if the courier himself became nervous and at a loss because of the message he carried. His throat bobbed up and down as he swallowed.

”That whole area is now... dead silent.”

”The few villages there that lived by fishing and hunting don’t really know what happened either, but they all fled in other directions. Scared out of their wits.”

”They said there was no way to go on living there, that something was wrong, that in all their ancestors’ generations they had never seen anything like it!”

The other three at the table were listening in a daze, but precisely because they didn’t fully understand, coupled with the courier’s faintly terrified expression and the content of his words—

it only made that subtle chill rising from the depths of the heart all the more intense.

It was as if the warm, wavering candlelight in the Silver Swan Tavern suddenly turned sinister and heavy.

”But Veltrest must have sent people to investigate, right?”

The firelight and shadows flickered across Lann’s profile; when shadow covered his eye sockets, those cat-like eyes gave off a faint gleam.

”It wasn’t just Veltrest. That place borders on the Elrand Duchy, so Duke Seward would have sent people as well. Yaden might even have dispatched men to scout it out. Tell me, what were the results?”

Temeria is a Kingdom, and beneath this Kingdom are vassal states like the Maribo Duchy and the Elrand Duchy.

The civil war over Temeria’s succession—the ’Dagger War’—was fought between the Duke of Elrand and the Duke of Maribo.

Half of Maribo was later crushed to rubble by a Saliva Demon summoned with the [Alzus Cross].

But that was a long time ago, and has nothing to do with the present.

”There were no results, my lord.” The courier pressed his lips together and spoke softly. ”Everyone who was sent before... none of them made it back alive.”

”Precisely because of that, His Majesty thought of you. He waited for you for a while at Dark Water, but didn’t expect you to come directly to Gos Velen.”

”So I was dispatched all the way here.”

Lann toyed with the stack of letter paper in his hand and fell silent for a moment.

”Understood.” He nodded. ”That’s all? Nothing else?”

”Yes, that’s all I know.”

”You’ve done well.” Lann lifted the papers slightly towards the courier. ”Your work is finished, sir. Go get some rest. Your expenses here go on my tab.”

The courier stood, saluted Lann, then put his felt hat back on and stepped out of the booth.

Once the man had gone, Tishaya raised her delicate chin and nodded toward the papers in Lann’s hand.

”What happened?”

Margaret and Belengar were also looking at him, curious.

”An...” Lann stared down at the letters, his expression knotting, as if he didn’t quite know how to name it. In the end he could only say, somewhat uncertainly, ”an anomaly?”

”Veltrest says that about a month ago, something highly unusual began to happen near Elrand.”

”To the northeast of Elrand, at some unknown point in time, the birdsong and sounds of beasts in that region grew more and more sparse.”

”At first nobody paid attention. Even when refugees began fleeing from villages in that area, people still didn’t care. But then, gradually...”

”Nothing came out of there anymore.”

”All sounds of living things vanished. That was when the Duke of Elrand—Seward—finally took notice.”

”And when the effect of this zone not only failed to subside over time but instead began to spread, when it seemed on the verge of threatening the Ponta River Valley, concern turned into panic.”

The three had already grown more solemn as Lann spoke. When he mentioned the location of the ’Ponta River Valley’, their expressions shed the last trace of surprise and doubt.

Because that place is simply too important.

The four largest Kingdoms of the North are neatly divided by terrain, almost like a crooked grid character.

The Mahakan Mountains, home to the Dwarves for generations in the south, connect to the Kestor Mountains in the north, cutting vertically, while the Ponta River runs horizontally through them.

Temeria sits in the lower left of the grid, Redania in the upper left, Codwin in the upper right, Yaden in the lower right.

And the Ponta River Valley is where the Ponta River cleaves the Mahakan Mountains from the Kestor Mountains.

The Ponta River is the boundary river dividing the Northern Four Countries, and the Ponta River Valley is the crucial choke point along this river.

If something goes wrong there, the entire inland shipping system of the Northern Four Countries will jam up and collapse!

For control over this location, the Northern Four Countries have been at war for centuries.

Haji Fortress within the River Valley has been seized back and forth repeatedly, the most recent time over forty years ago, when the late King of Yaden took it from the late King of Temeria.

To this day it remains a Yaden castle.

”What the hell is this thing?”

Margaret gaped, sketching the size of the area described in Veltrest’s letter from memory.

”An area that big... and nothing living left?!”

As she spoke, the rector of Airetusa turned her gaze to Belengar, the Old Demon Hunter.

”Is there any monster that could do something like this? Or some curse on that scale?”

”With respect, I doubt it.” The Old Demon Hunter shook his head and stood up. ”I’ve never seen such a monster or curse. If you said it was some large-scale Magic gone out of control, that I might believe. But you’re surely more familiar with that than I am. What I can say is...”

Belengar, now on his feet, looked at Lann. ”I’d say your idle days are over. That heap of broken armor won’t be staying on the display rack.”

”I can’t work your Dragon Scale into anything on such short notice. I can only repair your old set of Grandmaster Bear School Armor.”