"A problem readily solved." Erratus said, giving his prisoner another complimentary whack on the crown. He flinched as the bandit collapsed to the floor once again.
"Well, he's seen us now. It would seem that we're neck deep in it. We have no choice but to follow through, and I agree that we should congregate with the ladies. They need to hear this as much as you do. Oh."
The nomad withdrew the book he had taken from the raider and tossed it to Nero. Unable to read himself, it was nigh useless to him.
"He was carrying this. It may make some sense of things. Or complicate them. I don't really know what's in it."

Grabbing the book Nero placed it within his satchel without even bothering to take a small peek. "I'll carry him-" Nero approached the unconscious body and after a bit of tousling lifted it unto his shoulder. "You go tell the other three, get them to come with you up the path behind the camp towards the spring. If you can't find the way Lucia knows." Heading out the tent flap Nero added a scorning "Be quick about it" as he headed down the path himself.

Before Erratus had a chance to protest, Nero headed off down the path. The nomad was left alone to carry out his instructions. Reluctantly, he did so, making his way over to the other tent in the campsite. Without so much as requesting permission, he entered. Conveniently enough, Lucia, Talaitha and Nadya were all present.
"Hope I'm not interrupting anything, but we all need to meet up on the path leading to the spring. Nero's 'orders'. Personally, I think that sending me to inform you wasn't the best idea, but it was either that or letting me carry the bandit we captured again. That would be thoroughly unpleasant." Erratus paused for a moment, rubbing his bearded chin as if in thought. After a moment, he seemed to gather himself.
"Anyway, let's get going now." Erratus said, gesturing with his hands that they should start moving.

Lucia gasped and clasped her hands to her chest in shock "You captured a bandit?!" she whispered. Not one for subtlety, Lucia looked to her left and right to see if anyone was looking. "Lead the way!" she told the crazy old man, she sincerely hoped that this would blow over without too much conflict. They had just found reprieve and now this?

Nero had successfully evaded detection as he left the tent with the bandit lazily flopping about on his shoulder. Naturally Nero hated every bit of the situation but since Erratus' actions could possibly bring harm or even death upon him and the others he willingly endured his idiocy. After some time of grumbling and walking Nero approached the same spring he had stopped to speak with Lucia at not so long ago, if anything this would be one place where he could rest and wait for the others to catch up. Placing the lifeless body of the bandit in a bush he removed the loosely bound book Erratus had thrown to him when he first entered the tent. Thankfully Nero was taught to read when he worked as a servant, but besides having a list of names and numbers the book seemed to hold very little useful information. It wasn't until he turned thirty or forty pages that he discovered something quite interesting.

"Lyonell, Gaston - Sol Erra." he pondered on what exactly it meant. To him the obvious meaning would be that Gaston was sent to Sol Erra but for what reason? Sol Erra had been abandoned for quite some time. Even Kane himself abandoned the city after he supposedly transcended to meet with the God's of old. Nero shrugged off the idea and continued to page through the logs for more information that could help. "Wait, Gonye.." flipping backwards Nero urgently searched the text for Gonye's name. Back and forth he flipped through every page at least four times before he placed the book down, Gonye's name appeared nowhere in the book the whole thing was useless.

_________

Nadya remained in her relaxed position as Erratus spoke.

"Hope I'm not interrupting anything, but we all need to meet up on the path leading to the spring. Nero's 'orders'. Personally, I think that sending me to inform you wasn't the best idea, but it was either that or letting me carry the bandit we captured again. That would be thoroughly unpleasant."

It sounded crazy, just exactly what she expected from the two men.

" 'we' ? so you captured him together? and just what were you idiots trying to do? There's no way we're going to be able to get away with any of this." finally sitting up, Nadya exited the tent and pushed Erratus out of her way. "I don't even need to hear what you were thinking... Just hurry up and go...I'll just wait till I can kill both of you at once." Nadya was quite honestly too tired to be dealt with, even she realized she was acting quite irrational but she felt so terribly angry at Erratus for putting her in another poor situation.

Talaitha, standing up immediately after Nadya stormed from the tent, followed her elder from the tent. She shot an angry expression at the old man as she passed by. She was just as tired as everyone else and would rather stay, but decided it would be better to stick with her own kind. Nadya was the most trustworthy person around her at the moment and she would rather stick with her than wait it out alone, so if her elder left, she would follow. The situation frustrated her and all she really wanted was to rest in a warm bed, but there was little else she realized she could do at the moment and shrugged those thoughts off.

Erratus followed the others as they made their way to the designated meeting place. They were all clearly irritated by having their much-needed rest postponed even further, but this was far too important to wait. As the four made their way up the path, the nomad kept his eyes peeled for any raiders that might be tailing them.

It didn't take long for the group to arrive at the spring where Nero instructed, and by the time they had arrived the captive bandit had woken up and was squirming about against a tree. Nero was still paging through the book Erratus had given him when he first showed him the bandit, and upon the group's arrival he simply shook his head and closed the book. "Welp, you're the one who wanted to question him. So why don't you start?" Nero slowly rose from the group, approached Erratus, and gave him a gentle push towards the tied up man. Nadya immediately grabbed at Nero's arm and jerked him to her side.

"So what do you have to do with his capture?" her voice was at hissing whisper as she spoke, Nero could tell right away she was out for blood.

"Nothing, it was Khast who tied him up and brought him back to the camp. I'm just trying to rectify the situation while maybe learning a thing or two."

Erratus approached the bandit, cane in hand. He leaned against it as he eyed his prisoner unnervingly. After a few seconds, he spoke.
"Alright, I apologize for falling on top of you. I'm also sorry for clocking you on the noggin. I sort of panicked, you understand." The nomad's gaze wandered for a moment before he continued.
"Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to untie your gag and your feet. If I were you, I wouldn't even think about running or screaming unless you want a third welt on your head. Next time, I'll hit you hard enough to give you amnesia, but that can be avoided if you answer our questions to the best of your knowledge. All of us are simply curious about Gonye's plans, just like you."
Erratus began to unbind the bandit, cane on standby.
"Now, let's start with what you and your friend talked about under my tree. I've already heard everything, so there's no point in keeping quiet."

Once the bandit had been freed from his binds he took a moment to inhale deeply and stretch out his limbs. As he did so Erratus had begun to ask questions that he wasn't entirely too sure about, for the moment he felt dazed from being assaulted twice.

"Alright, listen. What you heard back there was just speculating." pausing for a second the bandit placed a hand upon the back of his head as he let out a slight moan. "I'm just goin' off what I heard 'nother man said. But if you really got to know, they think Gonye wants to send you east 'cross the river to Gennenberg. I don't know why or when so don't bother asking!" the bandit seemed entirely straightened out now, but his earlier confused state was beginning to be replaced with rage.

Nero shifted himself beside Erratus while the man spoke, the questions Erratus were asking were yielding little result and to him this was beginning to appear to be large waste of time.
"I have a question for you. Who is Gonye? Why was he imprisoned?"

"Gonye is the captain of our mercenary band, Lovrath Raiders is what we go by. Our captain was imprisoned from my understanding to keep us from causing further trouble out here, at least that's what the commander said." the bandit was able to quickly answer Nero's questions but by the time he arrived to his final conclusion on Gonye's imprisonment he seemed to entirely doubt himself.

"Is there anything out of the ordinary about Gonye?" Nero tried once more to pry some information from the bandit without prodding too deeply and causing him to be angered.

"I wouldn't know." he responded sharply as he spit upon the ground beside him. "I've only served under Gonye for a few months, he was put into that prison about a year and half ago. I've been serving under the command since."

Nero looked to Erratus before the rest of his group, he was unsure if anyone could think of something else to ask the man while they still had the chance.

"One more thing." Erratus interjected. He was sure the others would have questions of their own, though they would likely be fruitless.
"What do you know about the titan?"

"The titan? Oh right, yeah... The commander mentioned it quite a few times since Gonye was locked away." The raider began to think back for a moment for any helpful information that could better describe the titan. While he was doing this Nero decided to pose another question.

"And who is this commander?" the question obviously took their lost in thought prisoner off guard, he simply stared blankly at Nero for a moment before answering.

"Pitt, we call 'em Pitt. It's not his actual name, Gonye sometimes calls him by his actual name It's been so long though.. Petyr? Petiri? Piete... It's one of those, I'm sure of it. But about the titan, I really don't know much about it. Honest! I know Gonye referred to it as a colossus but Pitt prefers the term titan. Obviously it's a big creature, it's supposedly one of the oldest creatures to exist on this planet, even older than the remains of beasts the Aestarian government holds. There's a bunch of sprinkled hearsay about the chance that one of those creatures actually exists somewhere on the eastern border but I doubt any of it's true." The bandit quickly leaned in, squinted his eyes, and lowered his voice to a slight whisper as he continued on. "On the topic of odd magic monsters. Just between you guys and me, I think the captain is into some odd occult-magic stuff. When we was helping him escape from the fort I coulda' sworn I saw some crazy lookin' markings on his palms. I never paid much attention to that kind of stuff, but I think the guards did it to him, I don't remember those things on his hands when I first joined."

Nadya seem intrigued by the news that Gonye's palms had been marked when he was imprisoned, but at the same time she was unsure of what any of it actually meant. She had heard of placing charms on bodies to insure they wouldn't be able to travel far without feeling a stinging pain or feeling an excessive weight on their shoulders but she observed none of these signs in Gonye when they had fled the fort.

Clearing his throat to catch the attention of the group as a whole the raider rose from the ground. "Well that's that. I told yins everything I know, I can promise that." stretching his legs once more he began to fiddle about in his pockets making sure all his possessions were still in his possession. "I won't go telling anybody about what you did, I understand your situation completely. But never do this again, if you wanna' know more about things just talk to Pitt or the captain. And uh, for now unless you've got anymore for me I'd enjoy greatly the chance to go back and drink!"

Talaitha rolled her eyes when the bandit recovered his spirits so quickly. Was it all just a waste of time that she had been dragged into? Perhaps the bandit just did not know anything, since he seemed to be new blood in the group, and Gonye was hiding something.

"Is all this 'titan' trash just talk? I choose not to believe in children's tales and there's no tangible proof that they exist anyway." She mused in an attempt to fill the void the silence left behind. Turning to Erratus, she continued,
"And, I'm sorry, but I can't believe anything you ever say, you're the most paranoid man I've seen in my life. This is how you've reacted to everything that's happened so far, and I'm growing tired of it. Do you spit out false truths when you rinse your mouth out as well?"

Not wanting the argument to be spurred on any further Lucia raised her hand slightly "While Khast's actions were reckless and threatening to our own lives should Gonye find out, we shouldn't let further conflict fester between us. If what this bandit says is true, we're going to be sent somewhere together as a group into tainted lands. We need to be able to trust each other, especially in such conditions." she spoke softly, hoping to quell any further arguments, "We should just head to bed,"

"Is all this 'titan' trash just talk? I choose not to believe in children's tales and there's no tangible proof that they exist anyway." The bandit seemed to wince slightly when Talaitha had finally spoken up, he was obviously annoyed by her asking.
"Listen, I'll tell ya one more time, I don't know if's real or some story for kids. The commander seems to think it's real and that's all I know! Go talk to him or the captain about it."
the bandit crossed his arms as he awaited permission to leave from his captors.

Nadya wasn't entirely sure the bandit spoke of everything he knew, but she was certain almost all further information would be useless to the group. "This was just a waste of time..." she let out a terrible sigh as she turned back and made for the camp site on her own. "If he's going to keep his mouth shut about all of this I'm more than happy to be done here..."


"I don't really think we have anything else to ask then." Nero fished the book that had been taken from the bandit out of his satchel and returned it to him as a show of good will. Upon returning the book he was reminded instantly of a question that had been floating around in his head.

"When you raided the fort did you find another person being held above ground? Anyone?" Nero seemed somewhat desperate for an answer.

"Nope, you guys were it. Nothin' more. So am I good to go or what?"

"Yeah, I think we're through."

With the news that he'd finally be able to drink with his comrades the raider shot up, shook Nero's hand, and headed directly down the trail without even looking back.

"That's that then. Lucia is right, we should just head back." Nero was exhausted once more from the whole scenario and even though he could probably pull himself over to argue right beside Talaitha he felt it would just be wasted breath.