90^th of Dusk, 102

After insistent badgering from Marcus, Kael eventually agreed to go to a bathhouse. Marcus’ reasoning wasn’t just that Tairos was known for its bathhouses built from the rich hot springs in the land beneath; he argued that a rest was necessary, especially for Kael, to relax and heal the wounds he sustained.

Kael didn’t believe in rest—well, he wasn’t conditioned to. Few Sentinels fresh out of the academy knew rest beyond being simply unable to train, whether you want to or not. However, Marcus, being twelve years his senior, had learned to loosen the rules at times and therefore decided to enjoy his rest at the boathouse. After all, there was nothing he wanted more than to push Baron Vale and the Red Covenant out of his mind.

Marcus dipped his toes into the steaming water. The water just the right temperature…not boiling, yet by no means simply warm. Satisfied, he sank his whole body into the bath. A single towel was wrapped tightly around his waist, instantly making him more comfortable to move in as it was submerged in the delicious water. They were in a private room—free of charge. The walls had intricate stone carvings, the most impressive being a carving of the head of a wolf, where the spring water came flowing out of its mouth.

There were two parts of the room: the bath, where Marcus sat, and a separate landing for people who needed to rest. The wooden door to these two areas was tightly shut, allowing the steam to engulf the entire area, leaving the air with a thick yet refreshing smell.

The wooden door shifted, struggling to open, until it eventually gave way. Kael hunched through, towel wrapped around his waist. His rather tall frame had caused great difficulty, as the room where they had left their stuff just outside had ceilings too low. A linen bandage was wrapped around the Sentinel’s head, coming under the chin, over the cheek where he was cut, and around the head. His short brown hair was pushed down under the bandage, causing the top of his head to have an indent. 

On his arm, another bandage was wrapped around his tricep, covering the much deeper slice to his tricep.

“The water is amazing,” Marcus remarked. He dunked his head under water and came back up. His lighter colored hair was relatively longer than Kael’s, yet still fell just above his eyebrows.

Kael walked over to the bath and lowered himself into the water. The Sentinel moved around the bath, eventually sitting on the other side of the room, not too far from the stream of water coming from the stone wolf head.

“How does the water feel?” Marcus asked. Kael had been very quiet the whole morning, from when he woke up in the guardhouse to when Marcus eventually got him to the bathhouse. Though…Kael was never the most talkative. Marcus had expected a more brash and confident partner when he heard of Kael through the Arch-Warden.

“It’s warm,” the younger Sentinel responded.

Marcus nodded in agreement. “It’ll be good for your wounds.”

Kael stared at the stream hitting the water in front of him, bubbling like a fountain. “Have you sent word to Evalor?”

“I have, though I fear they won’t come soon enough.” Two nights from now. This was the first day Marcus had to process the information he learned. If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t know what to do. What can you do, after all? The window of time was simply too short. What had unraveled over the past few days blew his expectations out of the water. After Kamvel, he was prepared to never see a blood mage for the rest of his life. And yet, here he stood, with his young partner, in the middle of a conspiracy that he would simply need more Sentinels to stop. “Their confidence, it makes me wonder if they even recognize us as a threat.”

“We are a threat.”

Marcus looked at his hands through the distorting lens of the rippling water. “…Are we?”

“Yes. Perhaps they have not learned from history.”

“That history…is complicated.”

Kael fixed his gaze on Marcus. “I take it you fought in Kamvel?”

Marcus winced. “Yes.”

“So you are experienced in fighting them, correct?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“I remember learning their feats of strength, but I could have never expected them to be as fast as that man. The maid we fought was not nearly as quick as he was.”

“What they teach you in the academy could never really prepare you for what is out there.” Marcus chuckled. “Was Brother Lars there when you were learning?”

“He was.”

Marcus leaned his head back. “I hated that old fool, so crass and uptight. Never let me rest, not once…I still remember hiding from him whenever I’d catch a glimpse of him in the hallways. He made the other instructors look like loving mothers.”

“Brother Lars was my main instructor,” said Kael.

“That must have been torture.”

“I thought he was a model instructor.” Is this boy a masochist?

“Wow. Interesting world view you have.” Marcus took a deep breath. “Either way, I’d like to go back there, back to Kirklen, once this year’s finished…once I’m free.”

“You wouldn’t look for promotion?”

“No. I stopped finding this work fulfilling a long time ago…Between us, I can’t remember when I started just counting the years down, waiting till I can be released.”

Kael narrowed his gaze slightly. “Why? What would you do after?”

“Settle back in Kirklen. I’d love to start a family…Go to sleep by the ocean every night...I’d love to start fishing, it’s always seemed like such a calming practice.”

“I see.”

Marcus nodded. “Retirements a long way from you, kid. You’ll start thinking about these things too, what you want after.”

Kael frowned, turning his head down towards the water. “What I want after…”

“Yeah, like what you enjoy doing, what you want to spend the rest of your life doing.”

The other Sentinel didn’t respond.

“Like I said, you don’t need to know right now. I’m saying you’ll be thinking about it eventually.”

Silence.

“Anyways, I have till the end of Dark to work; I just wish one of my last jobs wasn’t this difficult—and painful. We’ve both been roughed up, huh?”—he grinned—“You’ve had the worse end of the stick though.”

Kael snapped out of his daze. “We will get them back.”

“We will.”

“What are we to do next?”

“I don’t know…how can we prepare?”

“We could use the guards.”

“That is a possibility…or do we wait in the Hall, from morning to night, and stop what’s going to happen?”

“But would they gather if we are there?”

“That’s the issue. What’s more important, stalling it or stopping it? We could post up and stop them from coming in, but what’s to say they don’t corner us, kill us, and do it anyway?”

“They cannot kill us. The innkeeper told me himself.”

“Baron Vale told him not to kill, but he warned us that the next time would be different. If we go in there early just to die—there’s no point. We can’t risk it…We have to invade.”

“So we mobilize the guard.”

“Exactly. They’re under the impression—at least if they believe me—that we don’t know they have a plan for the Hall on the 92^nd. They’re also under the impression that the guards won’t be there, since Kallo said he paid them off.” Marcus scratched his soaked beard. “So, we get the guard, surround the building, and invade. We can wait till a little after dark. There’s a courtyard behind the building…we can attack it from front and back.”

“Then we should survey the Hall soon, see where we can get in.”

“Yes, that’s what we do next…I believe they will prepare for resistance, just in case, but they probably won’t expect it on the scale we’ll bring. With surprise on our side…we can stop what will happen…the question is, what will happen? What are they planning?”

Kael stood up, exiting the bath. “We will find out.”