Thankfully, they were able to rest without any issues; as a result, the soldiers were able to calm their nerves. It was very needed with how tense everything had beco, and Morena was beginning to worry that people would start cracking.
The following morning, they packed up and left before the crack of dawn, and no one spoke much, not even Alina. The soldiers had grown quiet, focused only on the sound of boots against dirt and the rhythm of the wagons behind them.
For a while, nothing happened; it was just trees and silence, and this would’ve been enough for all of them had it kept up. However, nothing goes the way you truly want it to. As the morning stretched into noon, the path began to change.
It was then that they saw it on the ground: tracks.
At first, it was so faint that Morena wouldn’t have noticed it without the AI notifying her. A few broken branches, a half-buried fire pit, the sll of burnt wood still clinging to the air.
But eventually they ca across signs that were undeniable, tracks that even the common soldier could pick up on. Carriage wheels, boot prints, and even the signs of blood indicate that sothing happened.
"Bandits?"
Adolf muttered, crouching by the dirt as he examined the boot prints.
Morena dismounted and walked over. The ground was uneven, but she could still see the faint outline of a wagon’s trail leading off the road. The wood nearby was splintered, as if sothing had smashed through it.
After observing for a few seconds, she prompted the AI with a question to confirm her suspicions.
’These are too deep to be bandits, they had heavy armour, right?’
[Assumption correct. Depth of tracks coincides with wearing heavy armour.]
’Thought so.’
"Unlikely. The tracks are too deep. I don’t think these are bandits or rchants; whoever they were, they were wearing heavy armor."
The captain joined them, studying the broken trail and nodding along to her assumptions. He had seen many tracks like these in his days of leading the soldiers, and most of them were from fellow soldiers.
"You’re right, my lady, these are likely from soldiers."
"Mhm, from the pacing and spacing of each step, we could tell they were organized. This was a planned movent, not so scouting party or recon."
Adolf looked back along the path they ca from, then back to Morena before speaking.
"These can’t be soldiers from the Kingdom; there were no tracks in the direction we ca from, nor did anyone in the outpost ntion it. They ca from the Empire."
Morena could only nod at the guess, but she wasn’t certain yet.
Morena followed the tracks deeper into the trees until they ca upon what remained of a small camp.
It had been destroyed.
Tents were torn, the fire pit was crushed into the ground, and weapons were scattered everywhere. The people who once stayed there were gone, but there were no bodies behind.
She knew that there had been a fight because of all the destruction and the blood, but she couldn’t find any remnants of bodies, not even burned ones.
Which ans they didn’t burn or bury the bodies; they either took them with them, or no one died. But the second one was unlikely given how much blood decorated the ground.
But what stood out the most was that sothing had been carved into the ground around the entire camp.
A large circle with dozens of small symbols etched along the edges, each one burned black into the dirt.
Morena knelt, brushing away the leaves to see clearly, causing her eyes to widen in shock.
’These are the magic symbols. AI confirm?’
[Accuracy of symbols matches 98%]
Adolf looked down beside her to look at the symbols as well. To him, they weren’t sothing he had seen before, but they looked sowhat familiar; he just couldn’t figure out why.
"What are these, my lady?"
"I believe these are symbols used by people in the Empire. I rember seeing them in the archive. But whoever did this didn’t finish it."
She naturally lied about where she knew the symbols from because she didn’t want to reveal the book; it was not a matter of trust, it was simply a matter of being safe.
She hadn’t reached the level of power where she could defend herself alone yet, and because of that, she had to be as careful as possible with leaking information.
The part about it being incomplete, though, that wasn’t sothing she learned about before; that was just a guess.
"Incomplete? How could you tell?"
She stood up and walked towards one of the edges of the circle. There were burn markings on the ground, but no symbols. She had noticed this area while observing earlier.
If the symbols were ant to form a full circle, then a missing part like this ant it either failed or wasn’t completed in ti. While she didn’t know what the circle was ant to do, she could take so guesses.
"It’s missing a part here. Whoever was carving them either couldn’t finish it, or they were destroyed sohow. I think this circle might be related to the orb of light; maybe it was ant to trap it?"
That was just a guess; it could have just as easily been used to try to defend against it. But Morena didn’t believe that a Wizard capable of using such a circle would be fearful of such a weak orb of light.
After all, they were able to fend it off, and they were re mortals.
The captain frowned, looking around the ruined site.
"So they were trying to trap sothing, but ended up fighting it."
"Most likely, but this is just speculation."
Morena stood and stared at the burned dirt.
"But at the very least, we could tell that whatever they tried to do, most likely failed."
She could feel sothing faint still clinging to the air. It felt like mana, but it was too faint to properly pick up on; they once flowed through the symbols, but now they had faded with ti.
’AI, scan the symbols. Identify their composition.’
[Magical symbol sequence detected. Pattern incomplete, from existing sequence, a limited understanding could be drafted.]
’That’s fine, tell what it was most likely ant to do.’
[Understood. Based on letter pattern, most likely usage: containnt.]
’Figured.’
Morena nodded to herself, then turned back to everyone else.
Adolf kicked a broken helt aside.
"Then it broke free and killed them."
Morena nodded.
"That’s likely, but I don’t think it got all of them; they seed to have won, or at least fended it off."
Morena didn’t believe that they all would have died, especially since they had a Wizard with them. They most likely retreated after it escaped in order to regroup; she wondered how far they had gone.
On one hand, she wanted to et them, because she wanted to see a Wizard, but she also didn’t want to encounter them in case it turned out to be dangerous.
Regardless, they had to keep moving, so after looking around the area for anything useful, finding nothing, they got back moving.
The further along the path they went, the more signs they found. They found so broken armours, crests from the soldiers that proved they were from the Empire, and even so crates of supplies half-buried in the mud.
It seed like they were in a hurry, because further along, one of the soldiers found an arm half-sunk into the earth. The skin was pale, drained of blood, like the life had been pulled out of it.
Morena stared at it for a mont, then looked to the n.
"Search every inch of this place. If you find anything intact, take it. Food, weapons, maps, anything."
The n scattered.
Adolf stayed by her side, his expression grim, but he didn’t say anything; he didn’t like whatever this was. He hadn’t seen it before, and at his age, seeing sothing new wasn’t always welcod.
Morena looked at him, her voice calm.
"Don’t worry too much, we can deal with this like we have everything else."
He didn’t reply; there wasn’t much to say, and he just nodded in agreent.
Morena herself was reflecting on the words she just said. This finding had confird two of her previous assumptions and left her with many more questions.
It had been confird that the orb of light was related to the Empire, and by extension, related to the Wizards. While she wasn’t certain in what way exactly, the fact that a Wizard was here to deal with it proved her case.
The second thing, and the most important one to her, was that there was a Wizard in the forest. Getting confirmation that there was a Wizard in the forest was both good and bad.
Wizards were dangerous; they held so much power that Morena wasn’t sure if any of them could even compete against them. But she also wanted to use this chance to try and get on the Wizard’s good side, and perhaps learn from them.
Everything pointed toward the sa direction.
Toward the border.
By evening, they set up camp near a ridge that overlooked a shallow valley. The air was still, too still, but no one cared anymore; they were too tired to complain.
Morena stood alone near the edge, staring down at the valley. In the distance, she could see the faint shimr of fog that marked where the forest ended and the Empire began.
"Not far now."
Adolf said, approaching behind her.
"No."
She said softly.
"Not far at all."
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