Victor

  Winter came before we finally got our answer. That was enough time for the princess, Mal, and I to go run more jobs with the adventurer's guild plus get some additional training in. The details of those adventures, japes, and hijinks aren't important enough to speak of here but I wouldn't say no to revisiting them separately at another time. In addition to guild quests we spent time training with Valyrian, Illorien, and the White Wolves. I'd not gotten much of a chance to interact with the First Prince before this and we wound up being training partners a fair bit because we were roughly the same in terms of fighting skill. At least nine hundred years old and never held a sword but he was still hard to keep up with due to his natural physical advantages - when they say elves are graceful they ain't kidding!

  The princess actually learned a new wind spell, Air Dash, which allowed her to rapidly jump around the battlefield like a graceful swan - the speed boost made her a bit more formidable due to it simply being harder to pin her down. Nenewyn also taught her barrier magic, so now she could protect herself and others with a shield that could last as long as she had mana to pump into it; naturally she put her own spin on it which will become important later.

  I'd finally had Mal's special deck of steel cards made. These were more compact than throwing knives but just as deadly; thanks to Meli I was able to present some stainless steel to the dwarves and taught them the recipe. Our resident trickster had also learned two new variations of his sound-based attack spells: Sonic Crescendo and Sonic Bolt, which were good for small groups and single targets respectively, but he was still more likely to use his throwing weapons. Incidentally, Mal had also finally caved and took a share of our earnings - he got himself a new magic rapier with some of it. Like, sheesh, I know you’re our prisoner on paper but you’re still our friend and party member!

  As for me I'd gotten much better at the arming sword and in speaking Common but with my guns being my trump card I reckoned it was time to get them both enchanted - yes, I was now the proud owner of a pair of magic firearms! I could have bought more gear, but I decided it'd be better to put my wealth to a more pragmatic use: I bought a house in Tor Anaura. I had the king's permission, of course, and the princess even got me a great deal; she'd been a great help ever since I'd gotten here, that had never changed. At that time she seemed very focused, very determined, I really appreciated her efforts.

  So the place I bought ran me three thousand crowns; it was a simple two-bedroom affair with a decent sized front and back yard, where I had plenty of room to build myself a workshop. For now I'd park my car in front of it, but perhaps I'd fashion myself a garage of some sort. As for furniture I had taken Expanius' nice table along with all of his cookware so that was a good start. I also managed to finally go hunting with Val and we bagged a large elk, whose antlers I hung over the mantle. Oh of course we rocked out to some heavy metal on the drive! Apart from that and a rather nice bed I bought in the city my decor was fairly spartan - but I could deal with fixing that later.

  Well, moving on. One snowy winter afternoon, everyone was called to the war room. Hanzorian had laid out a large table in the center of the chamber which begged the question why nobody thought to put one there before.

  "Thank you all for coming," he began, unusually polite, it was kind of scary. "I have completed my investigations and have determined the Mastermind's location - yet - only inasmuch that I've deduced that there are only two places he could be."

  He laid out a map. "Expanius' notation style was cryptic in the extreme, but with assistance I was able to decode it faster than usual. Let us refer to the former Gaian fort that Red Lightning cleared out as Grimdark Base for our purposes. This large mountain, the Dragonhorn, is the tallest peak in the Southern Cross; beneath it lies the central hub of the whole system. According to…".

  He sighed, "... A literal pocket guide to the empire found among Expanius' book collection, the location was chosen because it was uninhabited. Dwarves do not dare mine there due to the prevalent dragons of various breeds on the surface; not all dragons are hostile, but enough of them are in order for it to be too great a risk. Mining requires the occasional egress, and a subterranean city must needs be supplied by surface food or imports which necessitates openings to the surface.

  But a teleportation hub need only be dug out with no entrances. Every teleporter in the network could be configured to reach the hub but some teleporters could also reach out to other locations within the network. The pocket guide makes it clear that this was to keep far-flung outposts connected but at the same time maintaining efficiency.

  It is my belief that the Black Order doesn't have access to the hub, either because it's been destroyed, they simply don't know how to configure the teleporters, or there’s a broken connection between some of them - otherwise they might have been able to send reinforcements to Grimdark Base after they lost scores of their own. Therefore, the balance of probability suggests that we can eliminate any place which doesn't have a direct link to Grimdark Base."

  Hanzo had drawn a red circle around somewhere in, huh, so Grimdark forest used to be smaller, ah I think someone did mention that. There were two more circles drawn. Incidentally, I'd muttered something about the black order being sloppy while Hanzo was going through his spiel about why they didn't use the hub and that got a smile out of him.

  "We know from testimony that the castellan of Grimdark Base, Fayd, made frequent visits to the mastermind's lair. The general consensus seems to be that he employed teleportation circ-" he sighed, "squares to this purpose, for he was never gone for very long. Fortunately for us, Grimdark Base, seen here, only connects to two such former outposts - both located near or inside of a wilderland."

  He drew his fingers over the mountains east of Tor Anaura, to a spot in another mountain range beyond a wide valley. "Far southeast of Kurvania and just north of Tal Ayef, in a mountain pass high in the mountains of the Moldavian Wilderland."

  Valyrian butted in and stuck his finger where Hanzo was pointing. "Hey, hey, wait, that's Snacqua's lair."

  Hanzo nodded, unbothered. "Indeed. The great blue-white frost dragon, Snacqua, makes his home inside of that old Gaian fort. Whether he has an accord with the Black Order or simply doesn't care matters not. His is a known evil and may prove to be an obstacle - though he hasn't been abroad in centuries I dare say that perhaps the time for tolerating his existence has come to an end."

  Valyrian said to me, "dragons love them old forts, hell, I think the one that Nenewyn an' me went to had one but he wasn't home at the time. Them Gaians loved to build huge dungeons and big chambers, you see, and large monsters enjoy having a lot of space to-"

  Hanzo interrupted. "Not now, your highness. There can be time for talk of dungeons and dragons later. The other potential location is significantly further away."

  He drew his finger across the map, to the west, through several political borders, to a bulbous peninsula north of a port city, where he had drawn another circle. "This one lies within the Calvernian Wilderland - so deep, in fact, that I suspect the Gaians had designs on taming the wilderland itself. This city here is called, uncreatively, Calvernport; I suspect there may be Black Order agents there."

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "So, um," I said, with my signature hand-on-back-of-head pose, "How far away are these places?"

  Mal said, not even bothering to look at the map, "Calvernport is several weeks by horse, but the south-eastern reaches of the vale are much, much closer. A reasonable distance if you cut across the mountains or teleport, though significantly longer if you go around by way of Kurvania."

  Nenewyn nodded, "It is well within my range, though I shall require a night of rest afterwards. I've been practicing and I've gotten somewhat better at the art and Tal Ayef is a reasonable target for me to focus upon; Calvernport, on the other hand, would take many days and require blind jumps into potential danger. Perhaps once I've gotten as good as Merlinda-"

  "I'm certain you will make gran-gran proud, Lady Nenewyn," said Mal. We all agreed.

  So, I figured I got the picture. "All right," I began to pace around, "We don't know for an absolute fact that the Black Order can't use the hub so if we attack one of those places, there may be time for the other one to evacuate and the Mastermind could get away. What if we attacked them at the same time?"

  Hanzo smirked, "Indeed, once again your own mind echoes mine own. With your Cadillac and Lady Nenewyn's teleportation, we can send a team to each of them."

  Valyrian said, "I'm going east, none of ya here's ever fought a dragon before, right? Yer gonna need a certified dragonslayer," he pulled out his adventurer's guild chip: it was platinum.

  The princess whispered to me, "They only allow confirmed dragonslayers to advance from gold to platinum." Did not know that.

  Rayna said, "True dragons perhaps not, but, my people have a tradition of fighting linnorms of the north and hunting large dangerous game. The White Wolves will go whither Prince Valyrian does." Guy and Selafyn agreed. An unknowing father-son hunting trip is it?

  Sylfaena seemed pensive, but said at length, "Dragons of that sort are weak to fire - I'll also be joining Valyrian."

  The way she's glaring daggers at him, I reckoned she also wanted to prevent him from impregnating half the valley.

  "Then it falls to the three of us to take care of the west," I said, "What is that, an eight hundred mile drive? Hell, I'd still be in Texas if I started in El Paso and took the old I-10 that far. Take me about twelve hours if I never needed to use the restroom, refuel, take photographs, or buy brisket sandwiches at my favorite gas station chain - and that's nothing compared to the road trip I took from San Diego to Bangor across fifteen of the fifty states and that'd been about three thousand miles but I wasn't in a hurry so I took a lot of side-"

  When I lifted my head I realized that the whole room was staring at me in stunned silence while I was standing there doing the math with my chin cradled in my hand.

  Lord Naomewsa muttered, "To speak of so long a distance so casually, ugh, my old heart mew."

  I'd never heard that old cat-ears beastfolk chamberlain speak before, and was that a meow at the end?

  Rayna said, "Just how massive is this America place from which you hail?"

  "Surely tis an empire of giants," said Guy; well only in San Francisco.

  Hanzorian waved his hand, "I am all but certain that the numbers are beyond belief. Suffice it to say that the task of striking at, let us call it the Calvernian Base, shall fall to you, Sir Victor."

  I only liked it when the princess called me that, but I let it slide since this was an important briefing.

  "Both teams will move into position - as swiftly as the wind," I said.

  Hanzo said, "when the first team arrives at its destination, wait, immovable as a mountain and remain as silent as the forest."

  "Then," I said, "we attack."

  Hanzo and I said in unison, "Fierce as fire."

  Sylfaena said, "You're likely to arrive first, no, actually, there's no likely about it. This might be one of the few times I'll ever believe in inevitability. I shall send you a Transmission once we're ready."

  The meeting was over. There wasn't a moment to lose. Both teams set out immediately - we all agreed to meet up in Hylaria once our respective tasks were completed. If this was my favorite adventure movie, I reckon this would be where the sepia map appeared on the screen and the arrow started moving across it. But instead, I was up close and personal as we made the long haul towards places I'd never been - a sensation that I'd never get tired of.

  After purchasing a smattering of supplies we made our way west by northwest, along the same path we'd taken more or less, until we reached Hylaria where we made a brief stop. The princess handed off a letter from her father to the king of Hylaria warning him about the Black Order; oh yeah, we were gonna dox the hell outta the smug bastards. The Queen of Cara already knew about them, of course, and the elven king was to send his swiftest riders out to Andalon and Daz Grund with similar letters.

  We traversed through Hylaria's next-door neighbor Saldoria, then we passed through some mountains that served as Saldoria's border with the next kingdom, Avonia. We had letters for those two kingdoms, too, of course, and the latter was where we stopped for a brief lunch. After the kingdom of Avonia came the Avonian Wilderland, and I finally figured out that most Wilderlands are named after their closest neighboring country. When they said that Wilderlands were full of monsters they weren't kidding - I saw wyverns roosting on a lumpy hill with rock peeking out of the foliage, a tribe of actual friggin ogres off in the distance that we needed to drive around, then some kind of flying creature flew overhead but I didn't see what it was, nor did I want to ask.

  Wait, didn't this exact same thing happen a few months ago? Huh, a havin' two nickels moment.

  The rough terrain might have stopped a carriage or even a non-magically enhanced modern car, but not us. Once we were clear of the Wilderland we were in a wide stretch of plains with a vast forest to the south of us; the princess mentioned that there was a wood elf settlement within but she knew not where exactly. That forest's name was Elwood and I had to wonder if they preferred dry white toast there.

  Carrowen was a nice enough kingdom whose chief export was horses, but we didn't stop long enough, this time, for me to find out much else. Nope, we only had time to deliver one of King Illorend's letters to the ruler of Carrowen.

  Beyond Carrowen lay Calvernia - a place of commerce with many fishing villages along the coast. Calvernport was one of three major port cities along the western edge of this particular section of continent, each belonging to a different kingdom - ah excuse me, two kingdoms and one duchy. We stopped at the port in order to purchase fresh fish for reasons which should be obvious at this point, and proceeded to the Wilderland.

  The Calvernian Wilderland took up this kind of Yucatan-shaped peninsula protruding north-west, well, maybe more bulbous than Yucatan? It wasn't very far from the harbor actually. The environment was...surprisingly warm for where I reckoned we'd be in terms of latitude; almost subtropical in terms of moisture whenever we were probably where England would be on a map of Europe or thereabouts. Just what sorts of whacked out magic juju was going on with these Wilderlands? Well moving on, before long we found what we were looking for.

  Not hidden inside some deep forest but sitting openly in a relatively unassuming cleft. Judging by the location I guessed that this was intended to defend the pass against anything coming from deeper in the Wilderland.

  We doubled back, where we supped upon fresh grilled fish, and then found ourselves a campsite where we could monitor the entrance of the ruins with binoculars. We actually saw a rider heading for the fort while we were waiting - of course we stopped him and liberated his mount. A messenger, no doubt, he carried an encoded missive of some sort; a present for Hanzo. Ah, incidentally, I'd taught my two companions how to drive the Cadillac over the past few months just in case I got incapacitated.

  Five days passed without incident, and then the princess' ears twitched. She held a hand up to one of her ears and nodded.

  "My sister informs me that they're ready," she said.

  Showtime.