In minutes, we had reached the shore of Goryuen, traveling in the wake of the two Solstice ships. There wasn’t a real dock constructed on the beach just yet, despite all the construction underway. Captain Satoru parked the Kaminari Maru not far from shore and then prepped one of the lifeboats to ferry us onto it.

  Azarus, Liora, Bella, Renauld, Venix, and I all piled into the boat after taking the time to gear up below. It had been a few weeks since I had seen all of us decked out in full combat uniform. Last time had been during our Oni hunt.

  Myself included.

  I had thrown on the armor I had forged and hewn with Azarus’s help, once I’d started getting into fights again here in Kawamara. I didn’t have my Order of the Eclipsed Dawn armor anymore since I…well. I wasn’t really a member anymore. With the dissolution of the Nocturne Division, I had deliberately resigned my commission and intended to stick to that decision.

  I may have been Grey’s official apprentice, but that didn’t obligate me to be a member of his paramilitary organization.

  It’d taken me a while to realize that.

  I’d turned it into the Order quartermaster before I had left Elderwyck. Which had left me high and dry without real protection.

  With Azarus’s help, we’d designed something to my current tastes. While I wasn’t particularly interested in being an assassin anymore, I also wasn’t interested in becoming a full-on heavily armored knight. I still wanted the ability to be stealthy if I needed to be.

  We had settled on a form of light interlocking armor plates over silk. I’d never worked with silk before stepping foot on Kawamara, and I’d found that the mystically treated version of it they had here was far superior to most leathers. And since I was so associated with Oninite in these isles, and had such easy access to it thanks to my supplier, I’d forged those plates from my rapidly becoming signature metal. The black and blue of the metal contrasted nicely with the red and black dyed silk of the under armor, if I said so myself. The armor was capped off with some sturdy knee-high plated boots, and some equally long, plated gloves. Partly to hide the length of my Primordium arm, honestly. A thick, dark blue hooded cloak completed the ensemble.

  I was thankful for the cooling and heating enchantments that had been layered over that cloak. In the jungle heat that I was already feeling from Goryuen, I think I would have drowned in my own sweat without the cooling. I...didn't yet have the Enchanting ability to craft those arrays myself, so I had commissioned them from a local Hinagan man.

  My supply pouch, complete with new Bond Breaker lay at the small of my back, while my extendable daggers lay in sheathes on either side of my waist. Terractus was just beneath the dagger on my left hip, the gold of its horns prominently visible. In my right hand, I carried the blackened staff I had inherited from Tlazo, with its gleaming amber crystal at the top, cradled in a basket of ebony wood. I'd left my bow behind on the ship, since I wasn't sure I'd need it just yet.

  I felt ready, no matter what we would encounter down on that beach.

  Which…made me feel all the more foolish, when I was placed on rowing duty with Azarus. The two of us exchanged a look as we took an oar and got to work, our respective armors clanking with the repetitive motions. The rocking of the boat made his shield and hammer, strapped to his back, clang loudly from the motions.

  Venix, the prick, stood upon the bow of the tiny boat with his arms crossed while Liora and Renauld sat comfortably behind him. The Antium man looked like George Washington proudly braving the Delaware River with his white robe flapping in the island wind. Bella, meanwhile, turned around in her seat to smirk at me teasingly, very much aware of how tedious it was to power oars. She wasn’t the type of woman to take circumstances like this very seriously. I just glowered at the smug pirate for a moment before shaking it off.

  Now wasn’t the time. Not with the ‘welcoming committee’ I could see forming on the beach in front of us.

  That was…a lot of Solstice classers.

  Not all of them looked very friendly

  The Lieutenant from earlier had reached the beach before we had and looked to be arguing with a group of other officers who had pushed their way through the watching crowd. If I had to guess from their dress, all of these guys were much higher up on the proverbial totem pole than the affable helmet head we had spoken to. Thankfully, none of them were as outright wary as some of the onlookers were. However, more than one considering frown was being sent our way across the beach, as our lifeboat slid up it to rest on the white sands.

  By the time I had climbed out of the rowboat to step foot on Goryuen for the first time, the gathered officers were already approaching us. Venix stood at the front of our procession waiting for them patiently, his arms still folded over his chest. The Gnolls and Bella had already joined him and were waiting for Azarus and I. I worked the tension out of my shoulders and then exchanged a nod with said Dwarf, and jogged up just in time for the Solstice officers to come to a halt before us.

  They spoke first.

  “Captain Wernstrom, Order of Solstice’s Flame,” The lead officer, a bald, middle-aged man with a truly impressive steel grey beard said in a clipped tone. “You are the delegation from the River Throne?”

  I raised an eyebrow at the man. “Not…exactly,” I said when Venix didn’t immediately speak up.

  The Captain switched his gaze over to me and frowned harder. “Be clear, man. Are you or aren’t you representatives of Kawamara?”

  “We are scouts,” Venix finally said, drawing the attention of the officers. “Granted leave by the Emperor to search the Imperial Garden for a specific purpose. We do not represent the throne.”

  Wernstrom’s brow furrowed, but it was another officer who spoke first. “Who are you then? Why did you inform Lieutenant Salzen that you wished to speak to the Grandmaster?”

  Venix took a deep breath then. “I,” He said almost proudly. “Am Venix, sworn sword of the Shadowed Sun.”

  Oh man. That wasn’t going to go over well.

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  Sure enough, the mood around us immediately changed. Where before our group was merely being regarded with suspicion, that had changed. Now there was a great deal of hostility in the air. No blades had been drawn yet, but there were certainly a number of hands resting on hilts now.

  Captain Wernstrom narrowed his eyes at us, the numerous creases around them forming an imposing spiderweb of distrust. “What are a bunch of Eclipsed Dawn mutts doing all the way out here?”

  Okay.

  I know Venix had asked me to trust him and let him handle this. But I think he needed a bit of…help, with the delicacies of negotiation.

  I handed my staff off to Azarus and stepped forward, holding my hand's palm flat before me. “Peace, Captain Wernstrom,” I said, in as disarming a tone as I could muster. “None of us here are direct members of the Order of the Eclipsed Dawn. Not any longer. We are here on private matters and were quite surprised to see you and your compatriots on this…quite restricted island. As such, we merely thought to investigate the matter on behalf of our benefactors,” I stressed the word. “Among the Imperial court.”

  To my surprise, someone unexpected pushed their way through the crowd. It wasn’t anyone I personally knew, but I hadn’t expected to see someone like them among the Solstice members.

  It was a Kawamaran man around my own age, dressed in a similar manner to Venix. The man wore a green robe decorated with crimson spider lilies, while underneath it I could see hardy leather armor. At his side, he carried a katana in much the same manner I had seen other samurai in Hinaga.

  The man narrowed his black eyes at me specifically and pointed an accusing finger. “Prove it,” He said suspiciously. “If you are truly here by the grace of the court, you should have a permit.”

  I nodded slowly at the man. “I do in fact have one. I even have it on me,” I said, reaching behind my back. The move caused the tension in the air to ratchet up sharply, making me freeze in place. I eyed the gathered classers warily. “Gentlemen, I need to retrieve the writ if I am to present it for inspection.”

  The Captain and the samurai exchanged glances before Wernstrom nodded at me sharply. “Hurry up.”

  I did as he asked, withdrawing the writ of permission that Masayuki had presented to me. Unfurling it, I held it out for the samurai. He strode up to me and veritably snatched the piece of parchment out of my hand and then back away.

  The watching crowd held its breath while the samurai inspected the writ.

  “Well, Kazuma?” Captain Wernstrom asked promptingly. “Is it a real document?”

  After a moment, ‘Kazuma’ looked up from the document and gave the older man a reluctant nod. “Yes, Captain. This is a real writ of travel, issued by the Imperial court. You cannot truly forge the Emperor’s seal.”

  “Well, well, well,” A strangely high-pitched, creaky voice called out causing the surrounding soldiers to still. In contrast, the officers jumped to attention, spinning in place to face the direction the voice had come from. “What do we have here, eh?”

  In an oddly guilty manner, the crowd shifted out of the way to reveal the speaker, while Captain Wernstrom and the officers bowed their heads in respect. “Grandmaster Shacklock, sir.”

  So.

  This was Shacklock.

  He…wasn’t what I had been expecting.

  I hadn’t heard all that much about the man over the months, since we had first encountered the Order of Solstice’s Flame back at Helstein. The only thing I had ever learned about the man was that he and Grey had some form of mutual antipathy going on. In a moment of outright callousness, my mentor had told me once that he would probably celebrate if the man dropped dead. What…I had taken away from that was that the two of them had been bothering each other for a long, long time. Another of Herztal’s old monsters, in essence.

  And he looked like a complete buffoon.

  The Grandmaster of the Order of Solstice’s Flame looked like someone’s shlubby grandad. The man was short and slightly stooped over, holding himself up with a stout wooden cane hewn from what looked to be cherry wood. Visible blue veins stood out underneath his paper-thin skin as his boney hand clutched at the knob on his walking stick tightly. Despite his bent back, the man’s figure was actually whipcord thin and shockingly muscled despite his apparent advanced age.

  Over which he was wearing what might be the loudest, most ridiculous coat I had ever seen. It was bright, bright orange, for one, with loud red, green, and even blue and yellow accents. The colors blended together in a near tye-dye manner, as if it was mimicking a social movement from decades in Earth’s past. It hung almost limply over the man’s bony shoulders, trailing in the white sand of the beach below. While that…thing he was wearing was downright hideous, the Herztalian officer’s uniform he was wearing underneath it was shockingly mundane. The contrast between the two was so jarring that it took me a moment to notice the hat.

  The cowboy hat.

  The bright green, dyed leather cowboy hat, in a style that made me think the man was an old West cattle wrangler.

  I…

  They had those here? I had never seen them before! Not once!

  I almost wanted to laugh hysterically at the man, before I caught sight of what was beneath that hat. I only barely registered the shock of bright white wispy hair that stuck out on either side of the hideous hat. Instead, it was Shacklock’s eyes that drew my own.

  This man was insane.

  Batshit, bugfuck, crazy.

  The glint in his beady black eyes told that Grandmaster Shacklock had no regard for me, or anyone else for that matter. We were all just window dressing upon reality to this old monster, tools and toys to be played with and discarded at a whim. I’m not sure that even Nerexxa could have topped Shacklock in pure insanity.

  Did he even see the same things the rest of the planet did? I…I couldn’t be sure.

  And by the crooked grin on his thin lips, he knew that I knew that he knew that I knew….

  I shuddered and broke the gaze with the enemy Grandmaster.

  I think I had just seen something I wasn’t supposed to.

  A barked laugh from in front of me made me look back at him. But this time, I was careful not to look the man in the eyes.

  Shacklock was shaking his head. “Oh ho ho ho,” He said mockingly. “I know who this lot is. I’ve even crossed blades with one of ‘em!” He slapped his knee and laughed out loud, free and clear. “Venix, you old sack of bug guts, how are ya! Why, how long has it been?”

  Venix wasn’t intimidated by the old man, even though I could tell the rest of my companions were at least a little fazed by him. “Not long enough, madman,” He said, unblinking. “I believe it was the battle of Ryesfeld.”

  Shacklock nodded faux wisely, stroking the white stubble on his pointy chin. “Yeah, that’s right. Ryesfeld. I remember now. I stuck ya like a hog and then kicked your carcass off my spear like it was said hogs shit. I left ya bleeding in that field, sure you were done for,” He laughed again, sweeping off his hat to waggle it at Venix mockingly, with the hand not on his cane. I was somehow unsurprised to see that the man’s only hair was the two tufts that stuck out from the sides of his head. The rest of the geriatrics liver spot dotted chrome dome was so smooth it gleamed in the sun. “Boy was I surprised when I saw ya again in the capital.”

  The Antium man was unmoved by the old man’s mocking. Instead, he just inclined his head. “Would that be the capital that you are now barred from, old monster?”

  The smile on Shacklock’s face dimmed slightly. He snorted, putting his vomit-inducingly ugly hat back on his head. “Ain’t gotta piss on my parade like that,” He muttered grumpily, before sighing loudly. “Oh, what do you want? Why are you on my damn island?”

  “Your island?” I muttered to myself.

  Turns out, I wasn’t quiet enough. Shacklock’s beady little eyes zeroed in on me in a second. “You’re damn right my island!” He snapped, before taking a closer look at me. He tilted his head in thought, tapping his lips. “Say, you look familiar boy. Do I know you from somewhere? I kill your pa, perhaps?”

  I tensed up a little at Shacklock’s regard. “No. I-”

  I didn’t get the chance to speak any further. Shacklock’s eyes lit up, and he snapped his fingers. “I remember now! I saw a sketch of ya last year from a Loyalist profile!” He crowed, pointing a crooked finger at me. “You’re old Greycton’s newest little apprentice! The hell are ya doing here, boy?”

  Something happened then that caused my blood to run cold. The maniac’s face abruptly went cold, as all emotion seemingly vanished from him. He eyed me in much the same way the lion does the gazelle.

  “You lookin’ to die or somethin’?”